I refunded a guest's $100 deposit, which she had paid by credit card, by making a partial refund of $100 through the Reservation Manager system. The next day I received an email documenting the transaction but it indicated that only $97.50 was refunded to my guest so now I have to send her a check for $2.50. I understand and am willing to accept being charged a 2.5% fee on my end for the convenience of accepting credit cards, but I don't like having my guest shorted, especially when I advertise a full refund of their deposit. Is there a way to fully refund a guest's deposit other than by sending a check for the full amount? I've read through some of the threads about credit card fees but I haven't seen this addressed.

Unless this was a coding error on the processor's part, your guests should never, ever, ever see the fees you pay discounted from their refund. This was almost certainly a mistake on the part of the processor and should be rectified immediately.

Depending on who you are using for a processor, it is getting less and less common to charge merchants for refunds. In any case, you should be in touch with the processor today and demand that the mistake is fixed.

I am doing business online and I also receive payments that are net of a certain fee. However, when I inquired about the fee, I do not usually get a clear answer. I think the fees depend on the payment system because sometimes other transactions are not deducted with fees.

I'm the original poster. Just wanted everyone to know that my guest receved her full deposit and neither she nor I was charged a fee. The statement that I received from Yapstore, the folks that process the payments, was not as clear as it could have been (for me anyway) but she got her full deposit of $100 and only $97.50 was taken out of my account, thus refunding me the 2.5 percent I had been charged when she made her original payment of rental fee plus deposit.

Rest assured, your guest will receive the full amount of the refund you specify, while only the amount originally deposited to your account will be debited. VacationRentPayment (YapStone) reimburses their fees to make up the difference.

We will work with them to improve the clarity of the confirmation email you receive to avoid this confusion in the future.

This is really good to know. I thought that my renter was not getting his full security deposit refund, and I almost sent him a check for the fee amount. Making that clearer in the email confirmation would be helpful.

I called about this issue a few months ago.The guest is refunded all but the 2.5% credit card fee from your bank account; then the remaining 2.5% is refunded to the guest from the credit card fee that was taken to equal 100% refund.

Although I see that your question has been answered, I wanted to say I had the same question initially and found the answer by calling customer service. VRBO/HA does have written help on the subject, see: How do I issue a refund to a traveler?. However, my continuing gripe is that to find out an answer to any question one must query the knowledge base. Couldn't VRBO/HA have a table of contents for their help documentation, organize their help sections according to each step of the process from guest inquiry to refund, and show screen shots for guest and owner? Then, we all wouldn't have to try to figure out how to use the system through trial and error.

That would be a GREAT idea....like under "new to Renting" Something that says How to navigate through the VRBO/HA websites, payments and more. Then at least you would have some information readily available. The search bar brings up some good things too if you type in key words, but may not be as specific as you would like.